Come as you are

Come as you are. This is Jesus' invitation.

The invitation was given by Jesus in the words recorded by his disciple Matthew:

“Then Jesus said, 'Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.'” Matthew 11:28-30 (NLT)

The invitation is also repeated in a song Quest frequently sings:

Come out of sadness from wherever you've been
Come broken-hearted, let rescue begin
Come find your mercy, O sinner, come kneel
Earth has no sorrow that Heaven can't heal

Hear the invitation of Jesus in the words of the song:

There's hope for the hopeless
And all those who've strayed
Come sit at the table; come taste the grace
There's rest for the weary
Rest that endures
Earth has no sorrow that Heaven can't cure

Of course Jesus' invitation is not to come as we are with all our problems, issues, and burdens, and just remain that way -- weary and heavy laden. No, the invitation is to lay down our burdens:

Lay down your burdens
Lay down your shame
All who are broken, lift up your face
O wanderer, come home; You're not too far
So lay down your hurt; lay down your heart
Come as you are

In the words of this passage (Jesus' words), you will find rest for your souls.

This is the way of Jesus: Come as you are but don't stay that way.

- Brian McMillan

The Biggest Threat

When I first joined Theology Pub, I did it to be edgy. 

I was launching a new church that I hoped would attract all the skeptical, hipster, twenty-somethings. And I hoped Theology Pub might be a doorway into that world.

It wasn’t. But, it turned out to be much more interesting than that.

Theology Pub meets in a pub, and is made up of folks who have both an interest in God-stuff and a membership in a web service called meetup.com. 

At first, I was just an attender. I showed up for the fireworks. It was thrilling to observe the conversational ebb and flow, and watch how some people moved the conversation forward, and others - either intentionally or accidentally - derailed it. 

But when I took the group over, I discovered how challenging it was to facilitate.

Theology Pub has been an awesome training ground for extending grace to those who believe differently. Over the past three years, we’ve had pagans, atheists, orthodox Jews, not-so-orthodox Jews, progressives, conservatives, gay, straight, agnostics, astrologers, wiccans, tea partiers, theologians, pastors, skeptics, seekers, and a few regular, old Christians.

This level of diversity makes it absolutely essential to state, up front, that, in this context, all views and opinions carry equal value. We’re not making any claims about the veracity of those opinions, only their relative value within this discussion space. If you don’t make this clear, fundamentalists will ruin everything. 

Since I took over, we’ve had three major threats - a preacher, a new-ager, and an atheist. All were fundamentalists. All attended under the pretense of open-mindedness. But they just couldn’t help themselves; they had to be right, and everyone else wrong.

With certainty, it seems, comes an appearance of arrogance; it seems to be a package deal. I tried to convince them to leave their certitude at the door, to no avail. So, I had to block them. They drove people away, and nearly killed the group.

When facilitating a group like this, it is paramount that you make room for differences of opinion, affirm even ideas that you find peculiar, and shut down certainty. 

In fact, I consider it a badge of honor that a first-time attender once asked me, “Do you believe anything?” I do; but I was tickled that she wasn’t sure. 

You’ll be tempted to answer every question - to be “the certain one” - but consider that your Q Place might be the very first time a person has stopped to think through what they believe. And when that happens, it’s beautiful.

Because, the whole point of a group like this is that, when you make room for self-discovery, you create space for the Holy Spirit to do His work. He will use you to show how He loves. He will use you to protect those who are far from him. And only in that protected space, can people open their hearts to hear from Him.

Blessings,

Pastor Ed

Cycle of Prayer

(from the transcript of Ed’s 9/4/16 message) 

The Cycle of Prayer consists of four elements that are essential for an effective prayer life. And those four things are...

- PRAY

- TRUST

- RELEASE

- PEACE

What that means is that, first, we must actually act. We must pray. Prayer is an actual thing that we do. And this act of prayer begins the cycle.

But prayer isn't just words. It's not an incantation, like in a Harry Potter movie. 

Prayer is more like a spiritual trust fall. We bring our petitions to God, not in an effort to get him to do something, but as a recognition that we understand that he's in control.

The more we do this, the less God seems like a genie, or a vending machine, and the more he seems like a father. 

So, first we pray, then we trust.

And this trust can't just be an intellectual trust. We must respond appropriately. That's part of trust. If we pray, and we feel called to do something, we need to do it. That's the trust fall.

And when we do that, just like in a real trust fall, we release the outcomes to others. We close our eyes and take a leap of faith, trusting that God's got our back. 

But in order to do that, we have to stop thinking that the end results are on us. God uses us, but HE produces the outcomes.

That's why Paul said, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.” (1 Corinthians 3:6)

We must trust and respond, but God makes it happen. We leave the saving to God - we just show up.

So, we pray, trust, and release, and as a consequence, God gives us peace.

We've come to him in trust, we've responded, we've released the outcomes to him, and now God gives us peace, because we've done all he asked, and we can know that he's got it from here.

And then we start all over again.

Pray, trust, release, peace.

(And here’s some additional insight for today)

The more we pray, trust, and release, the more we begin to align with the will of God, and the more likely we are to pray for the things that were already on his mind.

God will begin to make your heart break for what breaks his heart, and he will remake you into the person who can love them into a relationship with Jesus.

What’s really awesome about this is that it makes interceding for another soul the greatest possible act of love. It means you are willing to be remade to love them better.

God does the remaking; he does the softening. But he still brings people to himself through us. And if we aren't preparing ourselves for them, where will they go? He doesn't soften their hearts because we ask him to, he softens them because we came to him in the first place.

Then he gives us what we need to walk them in.

Prayer Challenge

Something happens when we pray. 

If you’ve been praying awhile, you know that your prayers often fall infuriatingly flat. 

In fact, I have a relative who prays diligently, day-and-night, and she recently told me that she must be cursed because whatever she prays for, the opposite always seems to happen.

But just because we don’t get what we pray for, doesn’t mean that nothing happens.

If we pray with purpose and on purpose - especially when we pray for others, like our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and classmates - we will experience something. Stuff happens.

- Our interest piques (people become more interesting)

- Our investment grows (people get more of our time)

- Our influence increases (people begin to listen to us)

- Our attitude improves (we enjoy people more)

- Our assumptions change (we judge people less)

- Our apathy disintegrates (we lean into people’s lives)

We become the kind of people that are on mission with God; the kind of folks that God enlists to lead people onto the Way of Jesus. We develop empathy and compassion and intentionality in our relationships with others.

And this is why we’re called to pray for others.

So here’s your challenge for this week:

Pray behind three people’s backs.

Take your noticing skills to the next level. Notice three people (can be the same ones from last week, or totally different folks) and secretly pray for them. Don’t ask. Don’t pray out loud. Instead, before or after you encounter them, silently pray for them, perhaps in reference to something you’ve noticed. 

For example, let’s say you notice a mother at the store, and her kids are acting up. Pray that her kids will behave, that she will have patience and peace, and that people will not call her out for just trying to do her best as a mother.

Or perhaps you notice someone who is working hard, maybe on a road crew, and they look exhausted. Pray that they will be safe and have the strength to make it through the day. Then pray that they get good treatment on the job, and good rest and support from home.

See how this works?

Notice three and bless them. Go!

you are the choir

Some churches have identified choirs. But when Quest gathers to worship, the Quest congregation is the choir.

Choirs tend to perform for audiences. The Quest choir/congregation is no different.

The only difference is that some choirs understand their audience to be the gathered congregation; the Quest choir's audience is God.

When we gather to worship on Sundays, we are all performing for an audience of One. It's as though we - congregation/choir and worship team - are all on a stage and God is in the audience. In fact, God is not in the audience, rather God is the audience.

So sing out! God is our audience! Make a joyful noise!

- Brian McMillan

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